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I don't want to take away from how awful this was, but in 2010 there were 10,228 people killed in alcohol-impaired driving crashes[1] - that's 28 each day.

So no, I don't think we'll be hearing about this case for the next year - it's actually depressingly typical. It just happens to have occurred at a large event that Hacker News has a strong connection to.

[1] http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impai...

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The incidents definitely are depressingly typical on a long enough time scale and with a large enough area. Maybe self-driving cars will eventually solve this problem, assuming they don't come with their own problems too. Granted, we felt the same way about airplanes, but it certainly seems that far more airplane crashes are a matter of human error than something the pilot couldn't have controlled. I would love to be able to just nap while my car chauffeured me between San Marcos and Austin every day though...

Seeing as I live in Austin though, I suspect we'll all hear about this on the news occasionally, if only for summaries of the proceedings as they unfold over time.

What I believe was meant was that we in Austin will be hearing about this case for the next year, which we undoubtedly will. Thankfully the crime rate in Austin is such that capital murder cases tend to grab the headlines for quite some time.

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